Horrifically Bad Restaurant Websites

Slate has an article by Farhad Manjoo trying to figure out why restaurant websites are so bad.I agree with the premise. I mean I really agree with the premise. I think in my entire life (the internet part, anyway) I've seen maybe two good restaurant websites. It drives me nuts. You look up a restaurant to get idea of it's menu and instead you have to sit though a 5 minute flash animation of nothing i'm remotely interested in. I think this encapsulate the conclusion best:

"Say you're a designer and you've got to demo a site you've spent two months creating," Bohan explains. "Your client is someone in their 50s who runs a restaurant but is not very in tune with technology. What's going to impress them more: Something with music and moving images, something that looks very fancy to someone who doesn't know about optimizing the Web for consumer use, or if you show them a bare-bones site that just lists all the information? I bet it would be the former—they would think it's great and money well spent."

Superstar Vintners and Wines Under $20

Slate, which has surprisingly frequent really good articles about wine, asks why Superstar west coast wine makers don't sell wines for under $20. The short answer turns out to be, that good vineyards in California are expensive and a lot of these guys are already very wealthy anyway so they don't have to. It's good article but the premise is a tad off. It's not that these superstars don't make wine that sells for under $20, it's that these superstars don't make wine that sells for under $20 under their own label.

During our current economic unpleasantness the demand for pricey wines is low. But to lower prices would be a loss of status that the wineries simply won't tolerate. So, what happens when supply outstrips supply and prices don't compensate? Surplus. In other words; a lot of these high-end wineries are sitting on a lot of high-end wine that they can't sell for high-end prices. And then in walks Cameron Hughes.

Hughes is what is called (at least in France) a negociant, he uses his connections to buy leftover wine from these superstars and the bottles it under his own label. Most negociants buy wine on the open market to make their proprietary blends vintage after vintage, But where Hughes is different is when he buys wine from a particular winery he gives it a special lot number and it's on label. So the wine in bottle is the exact same famous wine that is being sold somewhere else for $50 to $100. Now, you may ask, what wineries does he buy from? Well, I'll tell you---I don't know. It's a secret, but the wine is great.

$9.99

Mike Steinberger at Slate (whose wine articles I've mentioned before)has an article where he tries to find good wine for under $10. He has some trouble finding --in his words, wines of "character and individuality". But he does manage to find a few. One of which I already reviewed. It got me thinking that I should mention a few that we have here. I mean, that I haven't already reviewed.